Sunday, April 28, 2013

I planted my little garden about a week ago. Only green beans, sugar snap peas, cucumbers and green peppers in the raised bed this year.

And with some sunshine and plenty of water this past week... perhaps the most exciting part of gardening.... the seedlings have started to appear!

I also have a tomato plant and some sweet potatoes in containers. The tomatoes should be fine, but this is my first attempt at sweet potatoes. I read somewhere that potatoes are good things to plant in containers because you can just dump them out when you are ready to harvest. Thing is... I have no idea when I will know it's time to "harvest" since they grow underground. I will need to look that up.

When I did my couponing yesterday and I said that I irritated the ladies behind me with all my coupons... they actually made a rude comment that they thought I couldn't hear. One said, "Well, sure, if I had the time I might cut out all those coupons......" As if I must just have all sorts of time on my hands because I have nothing else to do.

It took a lot of self-control for me to not turn around and say, "I'm a single mama with limited resources and three kiddos in all sorts of activities and I work more than full-time and up until three months ago, I was also going to school part-time. If anyone can talk about not having time, it would be me....." I spent two hours clipping coupons and making my plans yesterday. In return, I saved $150 on my grocery bill.

So I was reading a book yesterday about raised-bed gardening and the author made the point that if everyone with even a small yard would plant a small vegetable garden and grow some of their own veggies, that would leave that much more food to go to the hungry. I'm not sure the logic plays out, because who is going to pay the farmers? But, he also said that growing some vegetables for your family is a lot cheaper and better for you than buying them at the store. And it really doesn't take a lot of time to do it, if you keep it small. And I agree with him on that.

Also, there is just something strangely psychologically rewarding about it. Just seeing my little seedlings the last couple days makes my heart happy. :-)

So, that is probably more than you wanted to know about my garden. But... I'm excited about it.